Black Shell Media – Indie developer’s best friend

I got the honor of meeting with and talking to Raghav Mathur the co-founder of Black Shell Media. You may or may not have heard of Black Shell Media, but you really should know who they are. Especially if you are an Indie developer. For the rest of this article I will be referring to Black Shell media as BSM, because I am lazy.;)

So what does BSM do? Why is it so important to the Indie community? Here is the best explanation straight from BSM.
“We’re a publishing and marketing firm dedicated to helping independent video game developers reach massive audiences, publish financially successful titles and turn game development into a career.
Black Shell Media publishes over 55 titles with 1.5 million players worldwide. We have partnerships with companies including Valve, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, Logitech and Alienware.
Our mission is to help game developers get what they want out of a career in the game industry: passionate fans and sustainable revenue to keep them moving forward.”

When I first met Raghav he had several T.V.’s set up with various indie games running. First thing we did was sit down and play a co-op multiplayer game and it reminded me of why I love Indie games so much.

Everyone I met at BSM was super friendly and brought this excitement to what they did. They really believed in the developers they supported and the whole indie scene, most of the time we talked about how the indie scene has grown and matured.

BSM has been super supportive of MediaMan Reviews, which I am really grateful for. Even if they were not I would still write this article because of what they meant to the indie community. I have played many of the games they support and they all so far seem to have that fun factor that many more polished games are missing. They seem to understand what makes games fun. I will spotlight a few of the games they support, but with almost 60 and counting this article would be way to large I am afraid.

The Games!

The Power of the Stache!

One of my favorite titles they support is an indie game called Rogue Stache where your character powers up by finding various mustaches. You unlock many of these by beating levels and finding hidden chests through out the levels. This game is insane and incredibly fun. Here is a video of me playing, sometimes badly but it didn’t matter because it was so much fun.

A lot of the games I played had a few things in common, first they where very violent in a 8/16 bit pixelated kind of way, they where fast and challenging but fair and the action was really fast. None of the games that I played gave me gamer rage, because I was having so much fun with them and I got better as I learned the mechanics. One of those games was Zombie Party.

Dungeon Souls completely owned me and I loved every minute of it. You could play as a Barbarian, Archer and Thief and there where a bunch of other characters and classes you could unlock. This game has a ton of replay ability and not just because of its difficulty. Each character played completely different and where fun in their own right. Check out the gameplay below to see what I mean.

The last game I am going to show is another fantastic game called Overture. When you start off you can choose from Rogue, Warrior, Mage or Shaman. Like the other games mentioned in this article this is a rogue like where you will die a lot. You can keep your money and level up each character. Again each character plays different. Each game reminds me of when I was younger and games where just fun. Each time you leveled up or found a new set of armor, you felt like accomplished something. Watch my lets play to see it in action.

Many of the games I showed in this article where similar in style. As mentioned earlier, by the time this article posts there are close to if not more then 60 games. I will have more reviews and lets plays on BSM supported games, for now everything I have played has been absolutely brilliant fun.

What is truly great about BSM is their passion to help the Indie scene, and I am truly grateful for their passion. If you happen to be an indie developer reading this article get in contact with Black Shell Media. They truly can be the difference between getting lost in the huge Indie scene and connecting with the right people to rise above. I will be eagerly going through their catalog of supported games when I get the chance. If I haven’t made it clear that the are more then just a one trick pony check out the list of their steam games. Just cut and paste the below link and it will bring you to the current steam games on offer..

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Black%20Shell%20Media

Whether you are a gamer looking for something different or an Indie developer looking for support, you truly should get to know BSM. There is something inherently fun about the games they support. And it has truly been an honor to partner with them to direct my Mediaman fans to some truly outstanding Indie games.